Tonight's moon

Inspired by George, I put down the magnifying glass, and looked out of the window...




K10D, SMC-A 400mm F5.6

I'll probably poke about with it a bit more (or maybe a bit less) in Photoshop, but this'll do for now.

It's not really sharper, of course.

But do you agree that it looks better on a monitor?

Still, very nice. Quite jealous...

I have two 300mm lenses and the sharpest image I could get after more than 50 attempts (with various apertures and shutter speeds) was the one below.

I know my old lenses are not great (possibly quite near crap??), so they could be the cause of the poor image. Or could I still be doing something wrong? I have the camera on a tripod, two second timer, RAW. I found the sharpest aperture for at least one lens was f/18 (anything lower was much, much worse!)

I have an SMC Pentax-FA 1:4.7-5.8 100-300mm and a Tamron 28-300mm. Both have similar results.

Any ideas if I should expect better results from these lenses? I am quite ready to put the blame on the lenses as they are old and cheap, from my starving student days... but I would not overlook the possibility that I am still doing something wrong. I am just at a loss of what it could be.
As time goes along I start realize how bad my past photos were and never noticed at the time. So, I am now hoping that I am getting better and realizing the limits of the glass I have... as opposed to finding simply that I still suck.

the fact might be that chris has prime and you are using a zoom (quality loss?). it perhaps also appears that yours is a little dark, maybe extend the exposure time slightly?

Well i made a number of attempts to capture the Eclipse on Tuesday night and none are worth showing . I too used a tamron 28-300 but i would put my attempts down to my incompetence rather than the lens.
I just cant get my head around the exposure times verses f stops and all the other idiosyncrasies that go along with it.
Must keep practising is all i can say.

Nice shot Chris i am very envious
Amoringello: I would have settled for your effort it leaves mine for dust.

Well yours looks a lot better with a bit of levels and sharpening. I don't think it sucks as much as you think. The sharpening doesn't of course create any new detail, just gives the illusion.

Also, a full moon such as yours always looks flatter than one either just before or just after, since the lighting is direct, and so you don't get the crater shadows that give it texture.

Also of course, your shot (like my first one) is a 100% crop, so it's right at the limit of what the lens and sensor can produce. So there's no leeway at all: any focus error - and it only has to be incredibly slight - and the shot is ruined.

I took three shots last night, and although I had focus confirmation for all of them, two were just rubbish.

So I'd be inclined to blame the focusing first, having looked at dozens of my bad results.

At 1/20s and 300 mm, movement blur isn't going to be terribly significant, but ideally you want shorter exposures, since any tripod shake will also ruin it. You're using the 2s delay, so hopefully that isn't a factor.

At the end of the day, though, image size is very limiting. A guy on PentaxForums.com posted a moon shot taken with his Bigma out at 500mm, and it's clearly quite a lot better than mine, even though he hasn't displayed it any larger.

Edit: lens quality is a factor, though. I have a Sigma 600mm mirror lens, and the best moon I've had with it is not as good as the best from the Sigma 400mm that I was using earlier in the year, even taking the greater enlargement required.

I took a few shots of the moon the other day, i noticed that there was a lot of noise on all of them. more obvious if I increased the exposure setting in LightRoom.

taken at f:32, 1/2 second exposure, i wanted the leaves and the moon in focus.

Here is one with no tweaking.





here is the same shot with a bit of sharpening and increasing contrast and black levels.





I've noticed this noise on low light images a few times, does anyone else get them or do I need to get the camera looked at?

thanks

You Guys really should buy longer lenses, it'll improve your shots no end..........

Now that made me laugh